Condensation trails (contrails) are visible trails of water vapor that are created from aircraft engine exhaust. Contrails are often visible as white cloudy streaks across the sky, indicating a path recently traveled by an aircraft. The visibility of contrails, including the duration of time in which contrails remain visible before dissipating, is dependent upon various atmospheric conditions surrounding the aircraft, including among others, air temperature, barometric pressure, and humidity.
Because aircraft contrails form directly behind an aircraft and may be visible from anywhere from seconds to hours, contrails create a visual reference that points directly to the aircraft that creates them. Anyone that sees a contrail only has to follow the contrail to the end to see the aircraft that is the source of the contrail. For commercial and private aviation, this phenomenon is not a problem. However, for low-observable aircraft that are designed to avoid detection, a contrail can be a significant problem.
When a pilot of a low-observable aircraft determines that a contrail is being created, he or she can take any number of actions to prevent the formation of the contrail. Therefore, early detection of the contrail formation can be critically important to the pilot. Conventionally, contrail detection requires the use of one or more dedicated sensors, cameras, computers or other equipment mounted in the rear of an aircraft. Equipment positioned in the rear of an aircraft often result in the need for weight to be added to the front of the aircraft for stability purposes. While effective, a disadvantage to this dedicated equipment is the additional cost and weight associated with the equipment. Moreover, rearward facing cameras require windows in aircraft skin, which add to the cost and present additional low-observability issues.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.